Liberty's Last Stand

by Stephen Coonts

  Up and down the plains, in the Rockies and the Midwest, people gathered in spontaneous groups to cheer Texas and wave homemade Texas flags.

  In Austin, Jack Hays saw snatches of this activity on television before he, Charlie Swim, Luwanda Harris, and Colonel Tenney of the Department of Public Safety boarded a helicopter for a flight to Houston. They were met by the National Guard commander there, Brigadier General James Conrad, the mayor of Houston, and the chief of police.

  Unfortunately they were downwind of some tire fires, and stinking, heavy smoke was almost overpowering.

  “Have you got the riot area surrounded?” Hays asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Conrad said. The senior law officers nodded.

  “Where’s that FEMA dude,” Jack Hays asked, “the one I wanted at the pointy end of this expedition?”

  “He got cold feet and split.”

  Hays frowned.

  “Would have had to handcuff him and put a gun in his back, Governor, to walk him into that riot.”

  “Obviously he didn’t think his liberal credentials would protect him,” Charlie Swim said, and Hays chuckled.

  Hays explained to the politicians, “We want to capture the rioters and not let them rampage through the rest of the city.” Luwanda Harris and Charlie Swim looked grim.

  “Is everyone ready?” Hays asked the police chief, Colonel Tenney, and General Conrad.

  Receiving affirmatives all around, Hays said, “Start ’em moving.” Conrad spoke into his handheld radio. Hays turned back to the politicians. “Ms. Harris, Mr. Swim, will you accompany me?”

  “You got a grandstand seat picked out?” Luwanda Harris asked sourly.

  “Indeed I do. I am going to walk ahead of the troops and talk to anyone I meet. I would like you both to accompany me.”

  “They may shoot us,” Charlie Swim pointed out. Even as he said this, several random gunshots could be heard.

  “They might,” Jack Hays agreed, grabbed two elbows, and started off with Swim on the left and Harris on the right. The troops in riot gear followed, then the state police carrying shotguns and wearing helmets.

  Down the street, right into the middle of the riot zone.

  When they were seen, young men threw some rocks, then turned and ran. Hays kept advancing. The three of them passed burning cars, looted stores, and melting asphalt. On they went.

  Someone fired a shot at them from an upstairs window. Guardsmen fired back, and two soldiers charged into the building to find the shooter and arrest him, or kill him if need be.

  Jack Hays pretended he didn’t notice the shooting.

  It took thirty minutes, but an ever-tightening cordon of law enforcement and guardsmen had brought the rioters, mostly young men, into the middle of a large intersection. Surrounded, and scared, they threw down guns, chains, tire irons, and knives.

  Jack Hays was handed a loudspeaker. He climbed up on the hood of a fire truck that had followed the skirmish line and turned on the speaker.

  “Folks, the party is over. Texas in an independent nation, and as governor I am going to enforce the law. You and the folks who live around here will be questioned. If anyone here is guilty of murder, he will stand trial. For the rest of you, I am here to tell you nothing will happen to you if you obey the law from this minute on. No more looting, no more stealing, no more fires, none of that.”

  Hays paused and silence reigned except for the moan of a siren a long way off.

  “I know, Charlie Swim knows, and Luwanda Harris knows that you and your families have many grievances, from failing schools to horrific unemployment rates, to police harassment for the crime of being black.

  “But the time has come for a new beginning for Texas and for its citizens. I swear to you that the Texas legislature and I are going to take action.

  “We are going to have every complaint about police brutality investigated by the staff of a legislative committee, and both these folks standing beside me, Charlie Swim and Luwanda Harris, are going to be on that committee. If you think they will sweep harassment and brutality under the rug, you don’t know them.

  “We’re going to set up a private-public partnership so that people in your community, people who study, can qualify for the thirty thousand new high-tech, high-paying jobs that are projected to grow in Houston in the next few years…and you are the people who are going to fill them. Industry will pay part of the cost of your training and the Republic of Texas will pay part. All you have to do to qualify is put your butt in a chair and study hard.

  “Texas needs you right now. We are going to be invaded by United States forces in the near future. The Texas Guard needs recruits. You can do yourself and Texas a favor by enlisting. I am not going to pretend it will be easy or without danger. You may get wounded, maimed, or killed. But Texas needs your help. Make your life mean something. Fight for Texas.

  “Folks, the riot is really over. Stay and talk to the guardsmen or go home. No more rioting. This is your city and your nation.”

  Jack Hays got down off the fire truck. “Charlie, get on in there and talk to them. We need all the soldiers you can get. These guys like to fight—let’s point them in the right direction and give them some discipline and leadership. Hell, let’s give them a country to fight for.”

  Hays looked at Luwanda Harris and added, “You tell them I’m sincere—because I am.” Then he turned and walked alone the mile and a half back to the helicopter.

  In Abilene, Colonel Wriston had his column of tanks and construction vehicles ready to go by ten that morning. It had been hectic. He had received an unexpected assist from the president, who had announced via television that he was nationalizing the National Guard, so many of the soldiers had reported to the armory without waiting to be summoned.

  Wriston and his officers explained that since Texas had declared its independence the Texas Guard was going to defend Texas and take its orders from the governor. All but four of the guardsmen—who were sent home—agreed to defend an independent Texas, and Colonel Wriston quickly had them organized into units and loaded them aboard trucks and buses pressed into service. With tanks in the lead, the column got rolling at ten o’clock.

  One of the soldiers who was sent home instead drove straight to the main gate at Dyess and told the sergeant of the guard he wanted to see the commanding general. A call was made, and the sergeant climbed into his air force SUV and led the way to the headquarters building.

  Within a minute the guardsman was standing in front of the commanding general, Brigadier General Lou l’Angistino, explaining what the Texas Guard was up to. “They’re going to block your runway, General.”

  “When?”

  “About as fast as they can get there, sir, I reckon.”

  “Do you know where they intend to breach our perimeter?”

  “No, sir. I didn’t hear anyone say.”

  The general thanked the man and watched him leave the office. He nodded to his chief of staff, who closed the door. They had been poring over a stream of classified messages that flowed into the office just as fast as the message center could get them decoded and printed.

  Global Strike Command, GSC, headquarters had ordered him to get his airplanes ready to fly. They might be sent on bombing missions…or they might be sent to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska…or… . In the next message, GSC headquarters hedged. Belay the first message: Stand by for further orders. Let no civilians onto the base. Consult with local authorities and advise of the political situation in Abilene ASAP. Were the people loyal to the federal government or to the Texas rebels?

  On it went. Action messages were interspersed with messages from Washington, from the Joint Chiefs, and every command all over. The army needed his C-130s in Colorado and Alabama. Send them immediately. No, wait. Get them ready to fly and when higher authority had sorted out the priorities, mission orders would be issued.

  General l’Angistino shoved the whole pile to a corner of his desk. “Get the base security officer in here. Roust every
air policeman on the base and get them suited up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  L’Angistino had seen the morning news footage of the declaration. He had been horrified; his comfortable peacetime command had just been transformed.

  He looked out his office window at the runway. Rows and rows of B-1 Lancer bombers and C-130 Hercules aircraft were parked on the ramps. He had thirty-six B-1s assigned, the only B-1 wing on active duty in the air force. Twenty-eight C-130s were assigned here, but five were flying, doing overnight training missions or hauling troops and supplies from one military installation to another, the usual peacetime flight schedule. Now this.

  He had already issued orders to get all the airplanes serviced, fueled, and ready to fly. He didn’t tell anyone to bring the bombs for the B-1s from the magazines, and wouldn’t until they had missions assigned. Parking weapons on the ramp when they weren’t needed violated air force safety regulations.

  Block the runway. Was the guardsman telling the truth, or was this only a rumor? Or was he a plant to spread disinformation?

  The general was consulting a map of the base with his security officer, a major, when Colonel Wriston stopped his column at the place he and his deputy commander had been that morning.

  A lowboy behind the colonel’s Humvee offloaded a bulldozer, which scraped dirt to fill in the ditch between the road and the perimeter fence. The job was done in less than two minutes. More bulldozers offloaded from lowboys. They quickly tore out fifty yards of eight-foot-high, chain-link, barbed-wire-topped fence and shoved it to one side. A tank covered with soldiers went through the gap.

  Wriston watched his tanks, bulldozers, road graders, earthmovers, trucks, and buses full of guardsmen as they rolled through the gap and disappeared in a cloud of dust. Many of Wriston’s men were heavy-equipment operators in civilian life, which had made commandeering so much equipment relatively easy; it was theirs, and by parking it on the Dyess runway, they’d be putting themselves out of work. Well, he suspected Jack Hays would want full-time soldiers.

  The drivers of the tanks soon spread out until all four were running abreast raising dust clouds. This had the unintended consequence of blinding the drivers of the vehicles behind them, who were also trying to spread out to avoid colliding with everyone in front. Watching his column disintegrate, Colonel Wriston was reminded of his experience in tanks in the deserts of Iraq. He hated deserts. He climbed into his Humvee and headed off behind them to supervise this operation. If they didn’t get the runways blocked, this whole adventure was for naught.

  In the leftmost tank, the tank commander saw an air force SUV charging across the prairie toward him. There were four people in it, apparently. It came to a stop fifty yards in front of him, and the driver jumped out, holding up his right hand in the universal signal to stop.

  “Shoot out his radiator,” the tank commander told his machine gunner.

  The burst of the .30-caliber apparently holed the SUV’s radiator, because a cloud of steam shot forth from under the hood. The other three occupants of the vehicle jumped out with their hands in the air. Two guardsmen dropped off the tank, which speeded back up. The guardsmen disarmed the air police, pointed them at the hangar complex two miles away, and told them to start hiking.

  “You can’t do this,” the air force sergeant protested.

  “We already did,” a soldier answered. “Git.” They grabbed the guns in the SUV and on the ground, then ran to the left, the west, to get away from oncoming vehicles. Colonel Wriston saw them as he came up and stopped to give them a ride.

  A small group, one bulldozer and three earthmovers, peeled off to block the short runway. The main column clanked up to the long runway, an awesome sight with more than two miles of thick concrete stretching before them, three hundred feet wide.

  Wriston sped past the lead tanks and went a third of the way down the runway. He knew how far he was because he stopped just past the big “8” sign, marking eight thousand feet remaining to the end. He gestured to two of the tanks, and they came to a stop, then turned sideways. Other equipment would also park there.

  Wriston got back in the Humvee and rolled on to the “4,000 feet remaining” sign. He stopped there and awaited his vehicles.

  The operation went well, he thought. As some of the soldiers stood guard, the two tanks and four pieces of construction equipment were parked. Mechanics worked on the treads of the tanks, then the tanks ran off the treads. Bulldozers were similarly disabled. The tires of the earthmovers were shredded with automatic weapons fire.

  While this was going on, four air police vehicles came rushing toward them, two on the runway and two on the adjacent taxiway. Machine-gun fire and automatic weapons fire over the top of the vehicles convinced the drivers to turn around and retreat.

  Hand grenades were placed in engine bays, and guardsmen ran from the explosions. It was over in less than eight minutes. When all his guardsmen were on buses and trucks going back toward the hole in the fence, Colonel Wriston surveyed the blockade and followed along in his Humvee. The men and women of the Guard couldn’t have done it any better if they had practiced it every day for a week, he thought proudly. Then he followed his retreating vehicles.

  General l’Angistino had watched the dust cloud and activity on the runway from his office with binoculars. When the guardsmen had departed, he rode out to the mess of abandoned equipment and surveyed it with his fists on his hips.

  His chief of staff rolled up in an air police sedan. “You know what to do,” he said to the colonel. “Get busy and get this stuff off the runway. As quickly as possible.”

  Air force crash crews were still moving equipment at dark, when General l’Angistino went home. He had of course notified GSC and Washington of the runway obstructions, but other than a terse message to report when the runway was open again, nothing else was said.

  NINE

  There was an old sleeping bag in the workroom of the lock shop, and I spent the night in it. Willie had the television on when I woke up.

  The news this Sunday morning was that Texas had declared its independence during the wee hours of the morning. I listened while I helped myself to a cup of coffee.

  “The world is movin’ right along, Tommy,” Willie said. “Texas declared itself free of the US of A, and Barry Soetoro is havin’ a shit fit. He says that the right-wing conspiracy was more virulent than he and his advisors suspected. This should silence any critics of martial law. And so on.”

  The coffee was hot and black, and strong enough to take the enamel off your teeth, but a man can’t have everything. Idly, I thought about Sarah’s coffee—hers was several times better than this stuff. Maybe I should have tried to wheedle her into letting me sleep on her couch last night. Or in her bed.

  “Guess we’re back to forty-nine states,” Willie said philosophically, “if Texas can make Soetoro eat it. Kinda doubt that they can, but who knows. He was on the tube a minute ago, and was he ever pissed! Babbled about treason. Treachery. Betrayal. The malignant tumors in high offices.”

  “Good help is hard to find these days.”

  “Want an egg?”

  “Yeah, that would be good.”

  “Well, we ain’t got any, this bein’ a lock shop. No pancakes or bacon or ham or toast. I brought in a half-dozen doughnuts for me this mornin’; if you want one I can spare it.”

  “That’s mighty white of you.”

  “Don’t get racial, dude.”

  “What else don’t we have?”

  “Lots of stuff. Got toilet paper, though. White toilet paper.”

  “That’s the best kind.”

  “Can’t believe that they let us black folk wipe our asses with it.”

  I took my coffee to the restroom and settled on the throne. I reflected that Willie Varner had reminded me once again why no female on the planet had succumbed to his charms and leaped into matrimony.

  The Texas revolt was good news, I thought. The dung beetles at the White House now had something t
o think about besides forcing confessions from people like Grafton. Perhaps. Maybe they would decide that Grafton was partly responsible for the bad attitude in Austin.

  I dressed, drank another cup of Willie’s coffee-colored enamel-eater, and then headed over to McDonald’s for a sausage and egg biscuit and a cup of decent coffee. I made some phone calls. Called some of the covert warriors I knew, guys I had served with in various third world shitholes. Two were at home. I asked if I could come by. They said yes.

  Willis Coffee lived in Bethesda. His wife answered the door and told me he was around back in the garden. It looked more like a flower bed with vegetables, a few onions and some scraggly lettuce. He was hoeing.

  “What the hell you doing in Washington? I thought you quit your job,” he said.

  “I did quit.”

  “Hell, so did I. When they arrested Jake Grafton, I turned in my building pass and drove out of there.”

  “I still have the building pass. Maybe I ought to mail it in. They might come looking for it.”

  Willis snorted and leaned on his hoe. “I doubt if anyone at Langley has the time. Ol’ Harley Merritt is on the bridge now and Soetoro is cracking the whip. Merritt is looking for traitors within the agency. Maybe he’ll find one, but I doubt it.” He spotted a weed and attacked it.

  “Maybe they’ll invent some, like they did with Grafton.”

  Willis leaned on his hoe again. “Yeah,” he said.

  “I need your help, Willis, to rescue Grafton. You probably heard they accused him of conspiring to depose Soetoro. Blow him up. Try to turn America into a democracy.”

  “I heard.” He stood there awhile, surveying the weeds in his agricultural project. Then he threw down the hoe. He dragged over a chair and sat in it. “I got a wife and two kids. The kids were on a sleepover last night. I need another job, one that will pay the mortgage and grocery bill. I can’t afford to go tilting at windmills.”